


First Contact

by swaggietrash



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Other, Reader doesn't have a gender, get ready for some bad decisions and lots of schenanigans, somebody take my fingers before i continue with this self indulgent trash, uh oh spaghetti o's
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 14:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17562125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swaggietrash/pseuds/swaggietrash
Summary: “TRANSFORMER SIGHTING *NOT CLICKBAIT* **WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST SEE**” wasn’t the most convincing title, but hey, people have to make their ad revenue somehow.---You're an average college student that has copious amounts of knowledge about the Transformers franchise.That is, until you wake up in a universe where Transformers are real.Now, you're an average college student with highly classified intel on an alien species that has destroyed part of the universe and part of your planet.Good luck, I guess.





	1. DISORIENTATION

**Author's Note:**

> beta readers are for COWARDS  
> and i am NOT A COWARD  
> (it's also 6am and no one is awake to read my disaster hahahaahhaah aha aha hah ahaa ha ah)

The familiar, grating shriek of Shrek’s roar slams it’s way into your cranium, causing your eyes to snap open as you groan. Blindly scrambling for your phone, you helplessly slide your thumb against the screen a couple times as you squint at the bright white lettering.

It’s too early for your eyes to start focusing quite yet, and you barely even register Shrek’s roar being cut off as you bury your face back into your pillow. You don’t need to look at the clock to know that it’s a crisp 7:00 am.

It’s revolting.

Resting with your eyes closed and your nose being crushed by the weight of your skull, you finally turn your head to the side after a couple of moments to squint at your phone again. The press of your thumb to your home key unlocks your screen, and you’re greeted with whatever the hell you’d been searching up last night. Squinting at the lyrics to ‘Baby it’s Cold Outside’ by…

Oh, right, that’s why you were googling that. You had a crisis at 3:00 am over who the hell sung that song. Michael Bublé – Of course. Your mother used to be obsessed with listening to him around Christmas time, and the sound of him serenading you for the entirety of November and December as a child still haunts you.

Clicking the home button on your phone, your eyes scan your screen in search of your Instagram app. Finding it quickly, you open it to see if anything new had been posted. Scrolling through your feed mindlessly, you pause to glance at the time in the upper corner of your screen. Ugh, you have about an hour before your morning class starts. Despite the pit in your stomach, you know for a fact that morning classes don't suck nearly as much as night classes do. Your back tenses when you’re abruptly reminded of your one class that went to 10:00 pm every Monday and Wednesday last semester.

Instagram is depressingly dry, as expected, so you sleepily struggle to think of what to do for the thirty minutes you designate each morning to lazing about. Your professor decided at the beginning of the semester that she’ll mark you absent for the day if you use your phone during your morning class, so you have to do something worthwhile while you still can. 

Hmmmm. Archive of Our Own it is, then.

Pulling up the Michael Bublé tab again, you close it without thinking and perk up as you scroll through your options. Oh, hey, weren’t you just reading that amazing Whirl/Reader fic last night? You remember leaving a really long comment on it in a haze, and you cringe as you desperately hope that your sleep deprived brain didn’t come across too much like a raving madman.

You haven’t been sleeping well recently; for whatever reason, your head has been pounding for the past couple of days. It’s not a normal headache, either, or even like a migraine; it feels like you’re forgetting something important, or like intense deja vu is hanging over everything you do. It’s disorienting enough to leave your head aching up something fierce, no matter how many pills of Tylenol you snag from your best friend.

It’s pounding right now, actually; you’d been hoping the headache had maybe been caused by your insomniac tendencies, but despite nearly drugging yourself to death last night with sleeping pills, your headache remains.

Maybe it’s because you hardly drink any water? That’s what your health-conscious mother would tell you, anyways.

Scanning through your tabs, your eyes flicker over the various MSPARP and Cherubplay tabs before you finally catch sight of the familiar logo for AO3. However, as you skim through the titles, your brow furrowed in confusion.

Digimon? What the fuck? You don’t think you’ve ever seen a Digimon episode in your entire life. Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Sonic were always your go-tos when you were a child.

Besides, why would you have opened a ton of Digimon fics anyways? Tapping on one of the tabs, it seemed like you were in the middle of a chapter as the page loaded up, but you had no recollection of ever reading it.

Deciding promptly that it’s too early to conduct a scientific research experiment by opening up your tab history, you instead open up a new tab and type out “transformers archive of our own” into the search bar. After hitting the search button, you wait impatiently as the webpage loaded up, still reeling from all the Digimon fanficitions.

You know for a damn fact that you weren’t high or drunk last night; hell, you’d gone to bed early because your head had hurt so much. The ache was pounding behind your eyes, now, making your vision blur as the pain got worse and worse.

It was reaching agonizing levels the longer you thought about Digimon, so you let the subject go temporarily as you focus in on the google search that loaded up.

At first, you wonder if you were hallucinating, blinking a couple of times as you stare at the images and video thumbnails currently spread across your phone screen. Then, you conclude that this must be some sort of publicity stunt for a new Transformers movie or something. The Bumblebee movie did slap, so you hope quietly that this new movie will go just as hard as you decide to click on one of the suggested videos. It seemed to emit a sort of ‘found footage’ vibe from the thumbnail, so you wonder what the new movie could possibly be about as your Youtube app pulled itself up.

You got a brief glimpse of the last video you were watching before the actual video starts to play, and you blink rapidly as the shaky quality of the film. A loud cacophony of noise abruptly blared from your phone, so you curse quietly and smack your finger against the side of your phone in a desperate attempt to turn down the volume. It takes a few tries, but you finally make it so the heavy breathing wasn’t piercing your poor eardrums anymore.

However, as soon as you have the sound thing settled, you’re struck by how… Not-Movie-Like this video seems. It was shaky, but not necessarily bad quality; most phones have good quality cameras now, but it’s filmed sideways and is pretty choppy. You think it’s filmed on Snapchat or something.

There’s a hulking, dark silhouette that can be seen over the trees in the video, and it’s clearly nighttime. The person’s heavy breathing hitched as two twin, bright, red lights turn towards the camera, and for a moment a face was vaguely visible before the video was cut short. Goosebumps crawled up your back, and you sit up slightly in bed as you skim over the title.

“TRANSFORMER SIGHTING *NOT CLICKBAIT* **WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST SEE**” wasn’t the most convincing title, but hey, people have to make their ad revenue somehow. Flicking your thumb, you open the description to read it and catch sight of the time stamp.

August 2016.

Right, okay. That’s… Definitely not 2019, but that’s fine. Maybe it was some kind of student film? Your youth had been filled with gushing over Homestuck and Marble Hornets, so you hadn’t been keeping up with all the Transformers happenings back then. Maybe this had been released and didn’t catch your attention initially? However, as you scroll through the suggested videos, you feel your heart sink as you see dozens of other videos almost exactly like this one. There are countless videos that capture the full visage of brightly colored figures fighting or walking through cities, forests, the desert…

The timestamps were all over the place, the earliest one being 2006. It was an incredibly grainy photo of who you think might be Soundwave, judging by the coloration and blocky silhouette. The camera zooms in on his face, and his glowing red visor remained imprinted in your vision as you blink rapidly. The video ends shortly after that, and you slowly set your phone down.

What.

The fuck?

This can’t seriously be happening, can it? There’s no fucking way this is actually happening. Not once did you see a reference to a cartoon or video game, or even the godforsaken Michael Bay movies.

It was almost like… Almost like…

Your breathing hitched, and you could feel your heart constrict as the world grew hot. Sliding your legs off the side of your bed, you stared at your socked feet for a long time as your head continued to race. It felt like you existed inside of a fishbowl, your pulse pounding in your ears as you did your best to focus on the here and now.

Of course your first thought was how this couldn’t be real, and it was like your mind was stuck on that fact, hiccupping and swirling as it hyperfocused on how none of this could be real, all of this videos weren’t real, and if they were how could you ever trust anything, what if everything really was a simulation, were you living a lie, how could you know who to trust and how, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if –

Pushing yourself off the bed, you burst out of your room and knocked on your best friend’s bedroom door, feeling your heart in your ears.

There’s no way the Transformers could actually be real, right?


	2. PERSUASION

“Dude, I love you, but it’s,” Brown eyes squint at her phone for a brief moment, and a hand drags through her short, messy brown hair. “7:45 in the morning.”

Staring at your best friend as you wordlessly waved your phone in front of her face, you took in her appearance. Tired eyes that were usually hidden by glasses were on display, and they peered at you with sleepy grumpiness you knew accompanied her whenever she got less than 6 hours of sleep. She’s wearing the shirt you both got during your freshman orientation at your school, and those red joggers she likes to pull up to her knees while she sleeps. Her hair was flattened and sticking up on one side from where she’d been sleeping on her pillow, and your heart calms slightly at the familiar sight.

Holding back the urge to lick your hand and smooth the hair down, you take in a deep breath and steady yourself. This is Arden – Your best friend since freshman year of high school. You can talk to her about anything.

“… T-Transformers, they, it’s…” Your voice shook uncharacteristically, and Arden immediately looked more awake, her brow furrowing as she looked at her own phone in alarm.

“Oh, shit, did they attack Cincinnati or something? I didn’t see any news alerts about that.” Arden squints at her phone again as she scrolled through her notifications, and you find yourself fighting off panic again as your heart ached up something fierce.

No, no, no, no, your brain howled as it felt like all of your basic bodily functions came to a screeching halt.

Arden wasn’t cruel. She wouldn’t prank you when you were visibly upset like this, you /know/ that. Besides, she doesn’t know anything about Transformers besides what you’ve told her over the years; more often than not, she calls Ultra Magnus by the name ‘Magnum Opus’ because she can’t remember his real name. Attack Cincinnati?

“They aren’t _real_ , Arden.” Was what you finally managed to spit out, and she paused in scrolling through her phone to look up at you with an unreadable look. A few beats of silence fills up the room between you two, and she slowly let her phone fall down as she looked you up and down.

“… You haven’t drank another stranger’s drink again, have you? It’s too early. C’mon, sweetpea, lets go sit down and take a few breaths. Tell me everything.” Opening her door further, Arden quietly ushered you inside. The joke made you snort quietly, a sense of ease flowing through you.

Your legs felt like jelly below you as you made your way to her bright orange bed, hopping up into it as you inhaled deeply. The room smelled like Arden and that citrus scented air freshener she liked so much.

It’s familiar and helps you feel more grounded as you rub the soft fabric of her comforter between your thumb and index finger. Back and forth, the threads between your fingers are soft and smooth, but your broken nail catches on the fabric slightly as you continue your mindless motions.

Closing her door, Arden settles down besides you as you turn your gaze to her. With her looking expectantly at you like that, you find it easy to let your mouth fall open as you quickly explain the series of events that just happened, watching her face turn from confused and worried to pensive and even more worried. She has her hands in her lap, and you find yourself fixated by the way her forearm slopes down into her wrist.

“… So, what you’re saying is that you aren’t obsessed with Digimon, and that you’ve been obsessed with Transformers since before we’ve met? And they’re actually fictional beings?” She couldn’t sound more skeptical, and it made you wince.

“Hey, you’ve heard me say crazier things. Remember in my junior year when I was convinced my car was haunted?”

“You say that like you still aren’t.”

“… Listen, all I’m saying is that it’s still highly suspicious that my car used to slow down when I hit the gas pedal. I mean, what the fuck? And the whole radio thing used to freak the hell out of me too.”

“Okay, okay, chill. I was joking.” Your face falls into a light scowl, and you cross your arms as you give her a look. Arden sighed quietly and rubbed her face, anxiously fiddling with her phone case as she popped her phone in and out of the case quietly. “So, say I believe you. Why are they suddenly real now, and why do you remember them as being fictional?”

“I’m not hallucinating this. I know my paranoia can sometimes make me seem like an absolute raving madman when I get in a tiff, but there’s no cause for this. Not that all of my paranoia has a cause, but most of it does! But what’s the point of me remembering countless of comics, movies, and T.V. shows that don’t exist anymore?”

“Hmm. Lets think this through, then. What’s changed?”

“Fuck, I’unno. I’ve had this killer headache for a few days now? It’s been going on since I fell asleep in my 8am class the other day.” Rubbing your eyes, you felt your head throb just in time for you to mention it. An exasperated huff rushes through you, but you pause for a couple of a seconds as it finally clicks in your head.

“Wait a fucking moment.”

“What?” Arden looks suspicious by the sudden stars in your eyes, but she can’t help but smile a little bit at the silly look of excitement and glee on your face. “What??”

“ _Dude._ This all makes since now. It’s like – It’s like every self insert fanfic I used to read when I was twelve.” You’re cut off by Arden laughing suddenly, and you can’t help but pout as you gently pat your hands against her upper arm. Your mind reminds you to be careful as you playfully smack at her, as she doesn’t like it when you play rough.

“Hey, stop laughing, it’s a totally plausible idea. I’m not seeing you come up with anything better.”

“I’m not laughing at you, sweetpea.” Arden giggled, and visibly tried to look more serious again as she stifled her surprised laughter. “Don’t act like you don’t read those still, and I won’t laugh anymore.”

A playful sort of irritation bubbles up in your chest, and you give her a glare as your pout increases. Well, at least, you assume you give her a glare – Unbeknownst to you, you look more like a disgruntled, offended kitten over the fierce predator you want to look like.

“Keep makin’ fun of me, and I won’t hesitate to kinkshame you about your self insert Naruto fic. When are you planning on updating that next, anyways? You know I have alerts turned on for that.” Arden rolled her eyes and dissolved into laughter again, ignoring your very clear threat as she leaned back onto her hands.

“You know that the probability of you living your dream of being in a self insert fic is slim to none, right?” Despite her teasing tone, her words have gotten softer, and she looks concerned again. Your heart aches, and you know that she doesn’t believe your crazy idea for even a second.

Hell, you wouldn’t believe it either, if your positions had been swapped. Arden’s always been skeptical of anything magical or interesting happening in the real world; whether its ghosts or aliens, Arden’s a staunch nonbeliever or skeptic for all of it. The dynamic you two have reminds Arden a lot of Shane and Ryan from Buzzfeed Unsolved, which happens to be one of her favorite YouTube series to fall asleep to at night. While you haven’t kept up with the series in a few years, you consider it to be a step up from Markiplier.

“… Yeah, I know, but… Seriously. All of this shit I’ve seen, it just doesn’t add up. You and I went to see the new Bumblebee movie right after I came back from visiting Catty over winter break, remember? I very suspiciously snuck in a drink under my jacket because I didn’t want to pay for one up front.” Arden looked even more confused, shifting on the bed as she stared at you. Feeling your heart sink down into your stomach, you glance around anxiously as you internally fought to think of another way to argue your case.

“I’ve – I’ve read their comics, dude. More Than Meets the Eye, Lost Light, the Spotlight series… I’ve been working on finishing the whole thing, recently. Going to see Bumblebee got me back into the fandom in the first place, ‘cause I’ve been on an Undertale kick again.” Holding her hand up, Arden gets you to stop speaking as she thinks for a little longer.

“It’s not that I don’t believe that you haven’t read these comics, or seen this movie, it’s just… Everything I know goes against all of that. Sure, you’ve been practically in love with Transformers since they came into the public in, like, 2007 or whatever, but never to this extent. I don’t even know who Bumblebee is.” It feels like your brain stalls for a moment, and you feel like you want to start panicking again.

“Parallel universes,” You end up spitting out instead, and Arden raised an eyebrow as she waits for you to finish your though. She’s used to you using word salad until you get to the point. “Alternatives, similarities, déjà vu… Think about it. You have distinct memories, and I have them, too. Sure, we can have spats about who remembers what occasionally, but never to this extent. I swear to god I can quote over fifty different Transformers from the top of my head and give you a basic rundown of their character; would the me before now be able to do that?”

Arden still looks skeptical, and you give a frustrated sigh as you buried your face into your hands. Maybe having this discussion before Arden’s had her coffee and you’ve had time to wake up was more counterproductive than not. At least it doesn’t feel like your world is falling to pieces as much as it was before.

Wordlessly, you slide your legs off the bed and hop up, sliding your phone into the waistband of your pajama shorts as you turn back to Arden. The cool screen of your phone pressing into your heated skin distracts you for a moment, and you fuss with your phone as you gesture about with one hand.

“Food, I—I think we need some food. We’re both going to keep talking ourselves in circles if we keep it up at this rate. I’ll make us eggs and bacon, I’m pretty sure we still have enough bacon in the fridge for the both of us.” Following your lead, Arden pushes herself up and off of her bed as you lead the both of you into your dorm kitchen.

The entire wall of the attached kitchen and living room was glass. Most of the time, Arden and you keep the blinds down to keep it cooler in your dorm, but you keep one blind next to the stove open so you can people watch and observe the city you live in while you cook. Living downtown was a change for the both of you when going to college, but you’d like to think that the both of you are getting the hang of things in your second year being there.

Arden starts up the Keurig while you start setting up everything to make scrambled eggs and bacon. Soon, the sounds of hot coffee dispensing into Arden’s favorite owl mug and bacon sizzling fills up the living space. After a couple minutes of silence, you keep an eye on the bacon as you turn your gaze back to Arden.

A glance at the clock informs you that you’re skipping your 8 am class at this rate, and you find that you don’t give three shits about computer aided fashion design right then. You can google an Adobe Illustrator tutorial anytime you damn well please, you can afford to use one of your absent freebees for something this serious.

“… A’ight, but, let’s consider if I’m right.”

“Okay. Who on God’s green earth decided you’d be the Mary Sue of the nation, then?”

“I’unno, Arden, maybe Jesus decided to give me the big ol’ fuck you when I stopped going to church.”

“Didn’t you used to larp as a wolf and howl at church camp?”

“My point still stands. Maybe God’s apologizing for wailing on my juicy fat ass for all these years? My luck is shit – Honestly, I don’t know why shit like this hasn’t happened yet. Hell, I don’t know why something like this hasn’t happened to you yet, you totally deserve to meet Naruto, or, uh. Sasuke?”

“As if big daddy would ever apologize for slapping your ass.” You gag dramatically as you flip some bacon strips onto a paper towel, holding up your free hand in a thumbs down motion.

“Ugh, f in the chat.”

Arden snorts, watching as you crack a few eggs open and begin to whisk them up in a bowl, prepping them to be scrambled. You continue making breakfast in relative silence as you think, feeling a bit more confident that even if Arden doesn’t entirely believe you, you know that she’ll still listen to you about all this. She used to do this all the time when you’d rant and rave about ghost stuff, but she seems a lot more lax about all of this stuff.

Probably because Transformers are real in this world, but still. Your hand reached up to grab two plates from the shelf above you, and you divvy up an equal amount of bacon and scrambled eggs between the two of you. After giving Arden her plate, you wash off your pan and dry it before sitting down to eat your meal. For some reason, leaving dirty dishes in the sink made you anxious while you eat, so you’re always willing to tolerate slightly colder food in favor of cleaning up after yourself.

“If I am right, though…”

“You, being _right_? **That** would be more of a miracle than you ending up the star of a self insert fic.”

“Hey, be ni _iii_ ce.” Whining slightly, you grumble into your eggs before taking a big gulp of milk to cleanse your palette. “As I was saying. If I am right, then you know what that means, right?”

Arden’s plastic fork makes a quiet scrapping sound as she dragged it along the bottom of the plate to scrape up some eggs, and she paused in her scraping to gesture with one hand, obviously waiting for you to continue. Giving her a wide smile, you could feel your heart buzz in your chest as you sit up straighter.

“First contact. We’ve gotta make it, dude.”

“No.”

“Awh, what?” Deflating almost immediately at her harsh rejection, Arden doesn’t back down as she stared hard at you.

“You’ve been trying for years to get me to come with you to see them in action. My answer was no the first time, and it’s still no now. I’m not helping you fuck the giant alien robots.” Whining her name and looking increasingly more pitiful, Arden shook her head and pressed her lips together as her eyes narrowed. You knew that look very well – It’s the look she gave you after you’ve pushed her too far and she’s done talking about something.

“… Ugh. What time do you go into work today, 9:30, right?” Changing the subject abruptly, you internally scheme to bully her into getting what you want by doing what you do best:

Slowly, but surely irritating her until she gives in just to get you to stop. It’s a flawless plan, really, and one that works 7 times out of 10. So, as you direct the conversation towards an entirely different subject, you internally scheme as she tells you the current workplace drama.

Apparently, another girl has been hired on, and she’s competent for once. You’re momentarily distracted from your goal with the tantalizing idea of having more than two other competent people on payroll.

***

Your infinite patience runs out by the time you both are in the elevator, heading to lunch after Arden’s off her morning shift. After she left to go to work, you’ve done intensive research on this new norm, and you’ve come to the conclusion that you’re definitely not in the Prime or Animated continuity.

For one, you’re not in 2050 or whatever, and two, there’s no mention of Jasper, Nevada being a thing, so you’re pretty confident on your assumption. This leaves two other options, of course; that you’re either in the horrific Michael Bay movies (ugh), or you’ve managed to catapult yourself into the IDW ‘Verse (holy shit). You’re banking on IDW, considering that the Autobot/Decepticon war was announced as being over in 2012. Skirmishes still break out across the globe here and there, but with noticeable big wigs like Soundwave, Thundercracker, and Skywarp being on Earth along with some Autobots, you’re pretty sure that you’re dealing with the IDW world.

Which is.

Fucking nuts, you just want to say. Like, Jesus Christ? Even thinking it makes you feel like you’re off your rocker, and your head was aching up something fierce the more and more you thought about it, the more and more it started to make sense in your head.

If it wasn’t for you hoping desperately for years to have something like this happen to you, you wouldn’t have even entertained the thought of being from a parallel or alternative dimension. Afterall, damn, what was special about you?

You’re a 2nd year fashion major going to art school. You come from a lower to middle class family, and your art was alright, but not fantastic. You didn’t have any outstanding achievements, you didn’t have any special powers; hell, your hair wasn’t even pink enough to be considered a main character. All-in-all, you were average, and you’ve been okay with that. You had people who cared about you, you had a good life carved out for yourself, and you were happy. Sure, life tends to get in the way sometimes, but doesn’t that happen to anyone?

You still don’t get why this is all happening to you. Maybe it’s some sort of cosmic joke you don’t understand yet, but that’s alright. You’re on the same planet as your favorite fictional characters ever; you don’t think anyone else could even lay claim to that fact.

Unless what was happening to you was more of a widespread event than what it first seemed, which… Would make more sense, but, hey, you liked to feel special sometimes. Doesn’t everyone? The idea of being some sort of chosen one, like in all of your fanfics, fills you with…

…

Ugh, actually, no, you’d rather not be chosen by the Primes, or whatever. Sure, meeting your heroes would be cool as shit, but you don’t want to be some sort of figure head. That’s too much responsibility, and you have enough on your head with your looming student debt and terrible car insurance rates.

“… Okay, but, Arden, think about it. Giant. Alien. Robots. How fucking cool is that? It’s like Mass Effect but in real life, right?” Arden talks about games pretty frequently, but you’ve never been much of a gamer yourself, outside of playing Pokémon and dabbling in Minecraft. Arden doesn’t look up from her phone as she responds to you.

“You’ve already used this argument with me before.”

“Damnit.” Past, alternative universe you was too smart for your own good. Beat yourself to your own punchline. It’s time to regroup and think of another tactic.

“Besides, if you are from some other universe or whatever, the government will yeet you out of existence before you even have a chance to fuck the red one.”

“… Ohmygod, his name is Optimus Prime. C’mon, that’s, like, the easiest one, Arden.”

“Yeah. The red one.”

***

After your classes, you’re laying on your best friend’s lap later that evening, pouting up at her as you rest your cheek against her chest. She has her 3DS up above her face, the music from Animal Crossing spilling out of it as she hyperfocuses on fishing. You haven’t played Animal Crossing yourself, but you’ve seen her play it enough to know vaguely what she’s doing.

She must have caught your expression from the corner of her eye, because she gives you a look and shakes her head, making you groan and throw an arm over your eyes dramatically.

“Arr _rrrrrrrrden_. C’mon! When are we ever going to have an opportunity like this ever again? Never. The answer is never.” She doesn’t answer you, continuing to play her game. You let out an explosive sigh and slump against her, glancing away as you chew on your bottom lip.

“Seriously, Arden. When has anything this interesting ever happened to us? We’re going to live our lives being artists who will likely never do anything besides that. Maybe we’ll marry a couple of nice people and settle down, but besides that, we’re not going to do anything. We’re going to die without ever making a change and it’s all your fault.” Okay, you’re definitely being more whiny there towards the end, but it definitely seems to have caught Arden’s attention. Looking at you from around her 3DS, she grumbled before finally, finally relenting to your endless prodding.

“Fine. _Fine._ We’ll get you a robo husband.”

“First of all, it’s rude to call them a robot, they’re mechs, Arden. Second of all – Really?”

“Yeah, sure. What do we have to lose? Our copious amounts of student debt? You hurl yourself into oncoming traffic enough for me to know that’s a lie.”

Sitting up, you’re beaming at Arden as you throw your hands up, letting out a victorious cry as you pump your fists into the air.

“Yes, yes, yes, _fuck yeah!_ Holy shit, dude, is this really happening? Are you actually going to let me precariously throw caution into the wind and paint big targets on our backs so we can meet aliens?”

“As long as you don’t get us killed, sure. Go for it, champ.” Arden, to her credit, doesn’t even look mildly phased as you cackle, rubbing your hands other with an evil grin. Leaning over the side of the bed, you retrieve your laptop and pop that bad boy open, quickly opening up a new tab on Chrome.

‘r/transformersconspiracytheories’ … The perfect place to post a chronological list of events as you know them from this universe. That’ll get someone’s attention, at least.

“Well, in that case, daddy’s gotta go to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> introducing ur best friend and partner in crime, arden  
> she's a lesbian with infinite patience when it comes to ur bullshit and she can snap pencils with her toes  
> fear her


End file.
